Theme and Motif: Fate

____I looked up the astrology for when I was born. I am a Gemini, but I already knew that. The sign for Gemini are twins. The symbol looks like II. I looked up something called a birth chart andI put in my birthday and time and place and it made a birth chart. The birth chart showed where the planets and sun were aligned when I was born. Gemini are supposed to be lively and free. They're supposed to be happy and creative. Gemini are known to live life to the fullest. I think that most of these traits are true for me. There are some traits that I know don't fit me like how Gemini are supposed to be religious.
____Romeo and Juliet talk about how the stars determine their fate, and how they were meant to be from the start. I found many things about Gemini that aren't true for me, but some of them are true. I think that Romeo and Juliet fell in love too quickly. They rely on the stars and fate too much. Silly things like how Gemini are supposed to favor the color green over other colors being true for me, might not be as life-changing as a true fate being wrong.

EXTRA CREDIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At the beginning of the school year, I was really expecting a lot of creative writing, and a lot of reading. Yeah, the reading is not my favorite, but I can cope. I can also cope with no creative writing, since I do it on my own. I didn't expect so many essays, but once I get into them, I really get into them, so much that I have to have both my mom and dad go through it for mistakes, because I am really bad at catching my own mistakes.
I'd expected a lot more of "go home and do it on your own" kinds of things, but there's a lot of in-class group activities.
I learned that I don't know how to use commas properly most of the time, and that I use dash- or hyphens- or whatever they are way too often, just look back ten words, and there you go.
I didn't think that I would ever have a class in hall five, but I did, and it's really hard to push through the crowd to go up the stairs, but it's really easy to follow the natural flow of the people that are going down the stairs.

Skits

1) When Miss Havisham catches on fire.
-Miss Havisham, Pip,
-It's a good scene because it has a lot of action and it's funny.

2) When the police-ish people come to arrest the convicts.
-Two convicts, Pip, Joe, Mrs. Joe, police people,
-It's a good scene because it relates to other parts of the book and it has a lot of action in it.

3) When Pip gets caught by the convict.
-Pip, convict,
-It's a good scene because it starts the whole story and would be fun to act out.

Great Expectations

I don't understand who The Avenging Phantom is. Why does he/she/it keep appearing throughout the book? Why did he/she/it come into the story in the first place. Also, what does he/she/it do to help the story? Pip will just be thinking about something and then The Avenging Phantom will say something and then go away until he/she/it feels like coming back into the story.

Post 03-10-10

_____I didn't understand the newspaper aricle section that clearly on page 231. I don't know what it has to do with Pip or the story. And then he starts talking about the North pole and eskimos. Why? Then he says something about a patron, and I don't even know what that is. This whole section was very confusing for me.
_____I think that a patron might be like a customer... ...maybe? I still don't know what eskimos and the North pole have to do with anything. Also, I am still pretty confused about the importance of this article and how it is relevant to the story.

Group Writing

The most obvious ways that Wilde portrays the motif dishonesty in his play is through the characters’ physical actions and what they say. When Lady Bracknell is interviewing Jack to see if he is worthy of marrying Gwendolyn, no matter what he says, she seems to make it even more impressive than it should be. Wilde uses this scene to tell how the Victorian society is always lying to make themselves higher than the rest. Then, Algernon goes bunburying to meet Cecily, and he pretends to be Jack’s made-up brother, Ernest. Making up a fake identity is a bad form of dishonesty, especially in the case of Jack and Algernon, where they’ve both gone bunburying under the name of Ernest to get married. Wilde uses dishonesty in bunburying to show how often the Victorian society lies, and how big of lies that they are. Also, Miss Prism never told anyone that she left a baby in a bag. Wilde did this to both give an explanation to why Jack was found in a bag and later adopted, and to show how people in high society hide both big and little secrets from others to make themselves accepted. Wilde’s incorporation of dishonesty and untruthfulness in this play makes it more interesting and gives it excitement and suspense.

Poetry Out Loud

I watched Allison Strong perform William Shakespeare's "Sonnet CXXX; My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun" Allison put her hands on her hips to look proper because the poem was about a mistress who was proper. She talked in a kind of a British accent to emphasize the properness of the poem.

She sounded like she was complimenting on her mistress' beauty, but really she was saying that she was disgusting and ugly. She was disguising her complaints so that they would sound like compliments. It has irony because she sounds like she is saying compliments with that tone of voice.